Back from International Downtown Association annual conference in Calgary Canada

This past weekend I spoke with Stephanie Redman at the International Downtown Association annual meeting which was held in Calgary Alberta Canada. This gathering, of about 700 people, was held in the downtown convention center in the midst of a booming and essentially new city in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.

Our session "Strategic Planning for Small BIDs" was standing room only, which was delightful given that there were about 5 concurrent sessions going at once. We spoke on Saturday morning, and had about 70 people. To our surprise, the vast majority of our session attendees were Canadians, hailing from cities from 50,000 to 100,000 population. Like many small downtown organizations, they had small staffs, the vast majority had under 3, and a good contingent had just one staff member.

This was a sophisticated audience made up of folks who had already done some kind of strategic planning, but wanted more depth. You cannot give people a blueprint for an intensive planning exercise in 75 minutes, but we tried. The questions throughout were insightful and keen.

After our session we wandered around the exhibitor hall, and caught up with Jennifer Rose--AKA Downtown Diva--who was there selling her highly regarded Main Streets Database. We saw other people we knew including Mac Nichols, a former NMSC staffer and now a partner at ERA and Cindy Philo from the Old City BID in Philadelphia (who came to our session).

We are now thinking that we should include this session as part of our Advanced Organization Academy offerings, geared to help growing downtowns advance to the next level. If you want to know more about the six half day workshops in the Advanced Organization Academy line up, that we will be doing for Kansas, Wyoming and Baltimore Main Streets this Fall, contact me for a brochure and more information.